The present invention relates to communication technology, and more particularly, to a system and method for peer-to-peer (P2P) communication between different protocol types.
Peer-to-peer networking utilizes relatively powerful computers (personal computers) as terminal nodes, enabling more than just client-based computing tasks. Since most PCs have very fast processors, vast memory, and large hard disks, none of which are normally utilized fully when performing common computing tasks such e-mail and Web browsing, the modern PC can easily act as both a client and server (a peer) for various types of applications.
For real-time communications (RTC), peer-to-peer networking enables serverless instant messaging. Computers can directly exchange text, graphics, audio or video files among peers. Peer-to-peer networking allows dissemination of text-based information in the form of files or messages to a large group of peer computers. Several types of instant messaging applications, such as MSN® messenger, ICQ®, Yahoo!® Messenger, QQ®, and the like, have been developed for RTC. During operation, a daemon for a particular instant messaging application (e.g., a MSN® messenger, ICQ®, Yahoo!® Messenger, QQ® daemon, and the like) is activated in a peer computer to facilitate exchange between like daemons. Daemons for different types of instant messaging applications, however, cannot communicate with each other. Therefore, a need exists for a system and method allowing p2p communication between users of different protocol types.